


To Sleep And To Heal

by wordswordswords7



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Introspective John, Mentioned Claudia Stilinski - Freeform, Minor Lydia Martin/Stiles Stilinski, Post-Nogitsune, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-10 01:00:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6931489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordswordswords7/pseuds/wordswordswords7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is recovering from the Nogistune possession and John reflects on what his son has been through.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Sleep And To Heal

**To Sleep And To Heal**

* * *

  


Stiles sleeps for four days after everything is said and done. After seeing his own face, a stranger's mischievous darkness staring back him, cracking and crumbling to dust – after fainting in the hallway of the high school – his body still fights to find an equilibrium. So his friends eventually take him home. Home to his worrying father. Home to his room and his pillow and the bed he hasn't really slept in for weeks.

Not soundly anyways. 

He almost doesn't make it up the stairs, needs to lean against Scott and his dad. He's unconscious before they even make it to his door. His dad thinks they should bring him to the hospital, but lacking any kind of medical and not mystical reason for Stiles' exhaustion they settle on calling both Melissa and Deaton instead. When they declare him well, all things considered, he is left to his dreams. Melissa takes Scott home to properly decompress after the death of Allison (and even Aiden), and Deaton returns to his clinic. 

Sheriff Stilinski watches over his son like a guard dog on duty, but eventually enough sleepless nights of his own catch up to him and he too slumbers through the dawn in the uncomfortable desk chair. When he wakes up it isn't to the screams of his boy, terrified and panicked as they have been more than once recently. No, he awakens to a quietly choked keening and finds Stiles curled in around himself, face pressed firmly into his pillow. A few murmured reassurances and a soft hand on his thin shoulder are enough to coax him away from smothering himself. He’s dreaming. Of course he’s dreaming. 

John watches, unsure of who he is observing – his son, or the Nogitsune Scott had so vehemently assured him is gone. A small part of him worries that this is yet another trick. But his child looks so entirely wretched with grief, even in his sleep, and John knows. This isn’t supernatural. This is Stiles in the unconscious throes of fear of the _thing_ that had slipped into his head. 

He needs to sleep though, so John doesn't wake him. 

At the end of the second day of his son's quiescence, he steps out into the backyard and sits on the deck with a stiff drink and allows himself to collapse under the weight of the pain he could not prevent. When he thinks of the past couple of years – ever since this supernatural business entered their lives unbeknownst to him – John thinks of all the times it was Stiles protecting him and not the other way around. 

It makes him sick and he empties his stomach into the grass.

His kid should never have been so afraid. He'd once promised Stiles he'd always be there, after Claudia – after that eight year old boy had watched his mother die having no coherent knowledge of who her son was.

John allows himself to fall apart. And then slowly, _slowly_ he begins to rebuild himself as well as that promise.

When he's composed himself, he goes back up to check on his son but Stiles isn’t alone. While John had been breaking apart, the girl Lydia had come over. She is now curled up around the frail ghost of the once vibrant young man, her pale arm wrapped around his middle with dried mascara misplaced by old tears clear on her cheeks. She is fast asleep and John suspects Stiles' suddenly relaxed body is a result of her presence. That she can so easily still his restless mind is warming, and he cherishes the image of these two traumatized kids wrapped up within that comfort.

He leaves them be and doesn't say anything when he hears her slip out almost nine hours later. Nor does he remark on the fact that she is back the next two nights. And when he finally hears the floorboards above him creaking and the reposeful murmur of her voice coming from his son's bedroom, he doesn't think this is breaking his promise – not being there when Stiles wakes up.

Even if it breaks his heart to hear the low sound of sobbing, and teary apologies that follow Lydia's quiet reassurances that Stiles is not to blame. 

John hears Allison Argent's name more than once and he wonders sadly if Stiles will ever actually believe it. 

 

**END**  



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